ODK Central v2024.2: Submission deletes via API and S3 media storage

We’re excited to announce a major new release of ODK Central, packed with features many of you have been waiting for! :tada:

What's new

:wastebasket: Submission deletes via API
The ability to delete individual Submissions and their attachments is here! This is API-only, for now, but we will be making Submission Trash visible in the user interface in the next release. As with Form deletion, Submissions will be soft-deleted at first, but after 30 days of being soft-deleted, they will be purged automatically. Learn more in the API documentation.

:package: Store media on S3 for greater efficiency
You can now store submission media like pictures and video on AWS S3 or other S3-compatible object stores. New and existing media will be automatically migrated from the database on a regular basis, reducing database size and improving backup efficiency. Learn more in the documentation.

:earth_asia: Central is now available in Traditional Chinese
Thanks to @AndyChiu, Central has been translated into Traditional Chinese. Interested in adding your language to Central? Get started with this translation guide.

:brick: Laying the foundation for offline Entities
This release lays essential groundwork for offline Entities. In an upcoming release of Collect, you will be able to register and update Entities offline without sending those submissions to the server first. There is more work to be done for offline Entities, but you will be able to preview this functionality via the Collect beta or upcoming Collect release.

:mag: Preview Web Forms
See how XLSForms look and behave in ODK Web Forms! When you view your forms in Central, press and hold the W and F keys and click the preview button that appears to try our new Web Forms. For now, the preview is hidden because we don’t want to confuse anyone or have someone use it by accident.

Alternatively, you can use our ODK Web Forms Preview to try your XLSForms. Just drag and drop your XLSForm onto the website or try one of the demo forms. We will share more details soon, so stay tuned! :rocket:

How to get these improvements?

If you are using Central on ODK Cloud, we'll be rolling out these updates in the coming days. If you are self-hosting Central, follow the upgrade instructions.

See the Central configuration documentation for information on configuring S3-compatible storage.

What’s next

More work on offline Entities coming up next as part of a coordinated effort with Collect, which you can read more about here.

For our overall roadmap, please check out getodk.org/roadmap.

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